The people who carved out ecological niches

What does it take to be considered “Native to a Place”? My father was second generation born and raised within one mile of my great grandfather’s prairie homestead. I was third. When the USDA was promoting the CRP program (planting native grasses) my father told me, “I just don’t think Native Grasses will do well here.” Perhaps surprisingly, programs like CRP demonstrate that such false assumptions are naive (not native at all).

The North and South Americas are both huge, connected to each other, and uniquely isolated from other land forms. The controversy regarding when the very first humans achieved the American Continents rages on, but the evidence seems to point repeatedly to the longer rather than the shorter; From 15,000 — then 20,000 — then 30,000 years ago. Now it is possibly 130,000. If a generation is 30 years, cultural ecological adaptations of between 500 and 4300 generations passed developing a unique and specific relationship with these lands.

It is hard to wrap our heads around isolated human acclimation on such a long and broad scale.

With stone tools and fire — particularly fire, Original Peoples carved out ecological niches much more attentive to Mother Nature than is easy for our “modern” Euro-centric culture to imagine. The rich fertile soils the Pioneers “discovered” were those modified and improved through cultural use of fire, sequestering huge quantities of CO2. While the industrial revolution pumped out CO2, Original Peoples were pumping carbon into and enriching soils throughout the Americas.

— Richard Roth, Chico